Hanging Stockings, but Expecting Budget Coal

There is to state budget time in Albany a delightful sense of anticipation, like that of a child awaiting Christmas morn.

Note: This assumes Santa Claus is a round dude with a sick sense of humor.

We have two poor upstate school districts filing civil rights lawsuits against the state, charging that their cities are so shortchanged in the state budget as to deny their children such basics as counselors, all-day kindergarten and the advanced courses that could help their best students gain admittance to a fine college.

And Mayor Bill de Blasio finds himself shaking his tin cup and asking his perhaps-not-so-great friend, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, for a wee wording change that would allow the city to start a small voucher program to help working homeless families.

The upshot? The schools will probably get precious few of their needed dollars. The governor has gone “Lord of the Flies” on the mayor as of late, nearly demanding subservience. Just this week, he administered a slap, suggesting the mayor’s request to excise a few regulatory phrases was akin to asking to alter the wording in Magna Carta.

How, the governor asked, could the mayor’s people have asked for so much so late in the game?

Put to the side that the mayor’s people talked with state officials about this for weeks. This is where Albany’s cognitive dissonance kicks in.

Year after year, there is little or no discussion of the most lucrative items in the Albany budget stocking. This year, the governor has championed, without really explaining why, a change that would exempt those with estates of less than $5 million from any taxation when they die. (It’s worth noting that the governor’s own tax commission found no basis in fact for this tax cut.)

The cost of this inheritance tax break would pay for prekindergarten statewide.

Then the governor’s helpmates in the State Senate tucked a handsome, 3 a.m., $300 million tax break to the hedge fund and charter school crowd into their budget resolution. If this goes through, the Fiscal Policy Institute noted in an analysis, a wealthy woman who gives $1 million to the charter school of her choice could end up making money on her contribution once she finishes writing off her contribution on her state, local and federal taxes.

THAT’S a nice return if you can afford it.

“It’s not charity when you don’t actually spend a dime,” State Senator Liz Krueger, a Democrat, noted.

The Daily News has thrown an impressive editorial tantrum on this point. It accused Ms. Krueger of seizing on a “glitch” in the legislation, which displays a touching faith in the good faith of the State Senate. She has, the editors frothed, disappointed “his eminence,” Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan.

That is a wonderfully antediluvian retort.

“I’m not at war with Cardinal Dolan,” Ms. Krueger said. “The rich have every right to put their money into charter schools or yeshivas or parochial schools. They just don’t have the right to put my tax dollars there.”

Let’s circle back to those homeless vouchers. Not so long ago, the state paid $65 million a year for vouchers for homeless families in New York City. Advocates of helping homeless people complained that this voucher, known as the Advantage program, was penurious and favored working homeless families. (This latter point strikes me as a foolish objection, as working families are most likely to be ready to move out on their own.)

Their opposition helped along those at the state level, including Governor Cuomo, who killed this program.

Now the city wants to revamp the voucher program, albeit without any state money for now. But members of the governor’s staff complain that the mayor’s people have violated Albany’s court politics, which are intricate. You can bow this way and that and, if you forget a powerful duke, your point is lost.

In this case, Mr. de Blasio’s deputy mayor talked about the voucher often with state officials, but may have neglected to do so in person. Or an aide texted when she should have called. Mr. de Blasio played it right. He just apologized for “miscommunication” and reinforced that he really wanted his good friend the governor to help him.

Our governor understands that to be mercurial is a force multiplier. His aides let it slip Wednesday that Mr. Cuomo was an expert on homelessness, and that he would labor hard to help the mayor.

So just maybe the governor will produce the language needed to allow the city to spend its own money on a voucher for its most desolate. In Albany, that passes for Merry Christmas.

Email: powellm@nytimes.com
Twitter: @powellnyt

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A24 of the New York edition with the headline: Hanging Stockings, but Expecting Budget Coal. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe